-8-

Hit-Witch.

-8-

"So, this is what you've been doing, is it, Lei?" Yuan asked as she looked around the laboratory.

It wasn't much of a lab, it was more ramshackle than she had expected, but it was packed full of cauldrons, books and rune clusters half-assembled on the tables.

Yuan stared down the dark wizard in front of her, disgusted at the lengths he was prepared to go to wipe out the muggles; all around her, there were cages protected by mundane magically forged metal bars and rune-cluster generated magical forcefields, recognising fairies, pixies, a merperson trapped helplessly inside a large glass aquarium, a sickly looking Curupira that looked like it was on the verge of dying, but there was also something worse.

Humans.

They were sickly looking, thin, covered in pustules, scars, and burns, and many of them had suffered from hair loss, and one of them looked like their flesh had been eaten away. For the last few months, the Chinese Ministry of Magic had been getting intelligence of someone attacking the muggles and even the magical world, spreading small-scale illnesses against both populations that left them in terrible conditions, and it wasn't just humans on both sides of the magical divide, but animals had suffered as well; mundane animals had been found in piles of gore and flesh and blood, while magical animals had been found in the same condition.

It had taken Yuan and her partners a while to find some decent intelligence on who was responsible and as she stared at the dark wizard in front of her.

Within minutes of getting an idea of who he was, they quickly ascertained he was a graduate of a different magical school, in fact, dozens of them; he had been expelled from at least 8 schools in his life, including the Forbidden City, and while his family had managed to cover it up, the Chinese Ministry had gradually lost their patience, especially after she had learnt from her research that Lei had been delving deeply into dark magic, dark rituals and potions, although what he hoped to prove or discover, nobody knew; the Chinese Ministry had been worried, but the foolish boy's father, who was just as stupid, kept ignoring the danger signs that the Ministry was going to have his son locked up for his crimes as they became increasingly dangerous.

A week ago, Yuan and her team had managed to track him down, and she had managed to get a good enough look at him - the first sighting ever, so he was smart in his way - but the moment she had seen his face, Yuan recognised him from her own time at the school. And from there, it was just a simple enough matter of going through the records to find out about Lei.

Lei was a dark wizard. He came from a rich, powerful family. Like Draco Malfoy, he had been spoilt but he had more talent than Draco, and he was willing to go the extra mile. Yuan didn't know when it had happened, but he had begun delving deeply into the Dark Arts, but he had taken that research too far.

He had decided to experiment.

He had been inducted into the Forbidden City from a young age like Yuan had been, and he had shown promise in Potions, Charms, DADA, and several other topics, but he had been expelled when he had begun experimenting on students. He was immediately expelled, and from there it never stopped. Yuan hadn't known, until recently that his father and family had stepped in, and blocked investigations and while they had largely succeeded, and enrolled him on another school, he was expelled again and again, all for experimenting with dark magic. Finally, he was struck off permanently.

She had seen him expelled from school during her first year as a student. He had been a student specialising in Potions and charms, but he had been expelled for conducting really gruesome experiments with the Dark Arts; the Forbidden City had been the last straw for the Chinese Ministry, and his family, despite being powerful, had not been able to cover it up.

Yuan thought of how long it had taken for her to deal with him in the first place. They'd had a terrible fight, exchanging blows after blows, but she had quickly discovered he wasn't a very powerful wizard, not by a long shot. It hadn't taken her long to stop him. She'd cornered him, and he had tried to throw potion bottles at her, but she quickly levitated them back; she would examine them later, but she had no doubt they were lethal.

"Enough!" She snarled, throwing his potions supplies aside and making sure they were too far from him, and making sure they were shielded so he couldn't summon them. "You are beaten. It's useless to resist. Don't make it worse for yourself."

The Star War quote was unknown to Lei, who snarled and used the brief few seconds to jump back up, he lashed out with his wand, but Yuan wasn't stupid and she slashed her wand.

Lei screamed in agony as his hands were sliced off; a brief look of nausea crossed his face before he collapsed to the ground, whimpering in pain. The wounds were already cauterised as Yuan had used a deadly cutting spell that used intense heat to stem the bleeding.

Yuan stared down at him, without any kind of pity. "Why did you do all of this?" She snapped. "What was the point? It's bad enough you've dishonoured your own family with your actions, but now you want to make things worse? Why did you kidnap all of these test subjects?"

"Shut…up, bitch," the dark wizard stuttered, but he got a kick in the face.

"Let me see if I've worked it out on my own; there are notes all over those tables, some of them I can see clearly, along with dates. You were creating the potions and distributing them all over those villages and towns, and watching the effects from afar," Yuan sneered down at him in disgust, "They were just experiments to you, weren't they? You haven't changed since the Forbidden City, have you?"

Lei looked up, curiously about this unexpected tidbit. "You were at the Forbidden City?"

"I saw you being expelled in my first year. I saw the Headmaster take your wand and expel you, but if I'd known what you would have become if I were in his position, I would have made sure you were thrown into a cell and the key chucked into a deep, dark hole. There's no way you're going to escape this one," Yuan took out her wand and stunned the dark wizard before she looked around. She sighed as she considered the enormous amount of work facing her and the others.

She needed specialised potion masters, experienced with dark magic to come and study the potions. She needed ward breakers and curse breakers to come and see if there were any hidden places here that were shielded from her, and she needed magi zoologists and healers to take care of the animals and people here.

She lifted her wand and silently cast a patronus charm…

-8-

Back at Hogwarts….

Harry woke up and took in deep breaths as he looked around the Room of Requirement, smiling for a moment before he examined his body. He was back as a boy again, and when he looked at himself in the mirror he had conjured up, he leapt back in shock, stunned; he had gotten so used to being a Chinese witch he had nearly forgotten his original appearance, but it was all there thick, messy black hair, emerald green eyes, and not the almond-shaped brown eyes and black hair, and clear Asian complexion.

Harry took a look at his watch. When he had gone through the portal, it had merely been 9 pm, and now it was….9.01.

He had just spent 193 years as Zi Yuan, in China, and he remembered everything of that life, he realised with a delighted smile.

It had worked.

IT HAD WORKED!

He had lived for almost 200 years, in a different reality, in a different time and country, learning magic. He had been a woman, growing up as a young girl, with a family like he had always wanted, and he had learnt so much magic, become an animagus, become a rune savant, becoming a Hit Witch before retiring and going off into academia to learn more magic, before getting married and having and raising a family. A tear slowly rolled down his cheek, remembering watching her youngest son walking for the first time, their arguments, and seeing him off at the Forbidden City. It had been a long 193 years, filled with great moments, and terrible tragedies, but while he had some worries about this form of mental time travel - having to spend so long getting attached to the new life before returning to the old, and wishing to just summon the magical knowledge he wanted to get away from Voldemort and Dumbledore, he was hooked.

Maybe…

Maybe one more lifetime wouldn't hurt?